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Comment Should get really exciting. (Score 3, Interesting) 50

Obviously the switch from "loss leader on a scale the capital markets can barely absorb" to "losing money" is going to sting; but I'm curious if we'll see sneakier knock-on effects.

So long as they were losing money hand over fist the vendor does want to throw enough tokens at you to make you feel like you are having a good time; but as few as are required to do that since they lose money on every one. If they were breaking even or turning a profit the incentive would be to sneak as much spend and upsell in as possible; and it's well known that the verbosity/cost of LLM chatter is hard to predict; harder if there are multiple models and other complications being switched around in the background.

What sort of exciting little tricks will we see from vendors who actually make more if you use more?

Comment Re:I knew this would happen eventually (Score 1) 22

If the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world don't own or at least have significant hooks into all of the major VPN service providers, someone should be fired for not doing their job.

I should have included organized crime syndicates in that list, though thanks to Google's TLS-all-the-things push traffic sniffing is less useful for stealing money, and criminals generally have less interest in spying on people by doing traffic analysis.

Comment Re:I knew this would happen eventually (Score 1) 22

.... they're just as likely to be a massive security and privacy risk. The problem is that they concentrate all of the traffic you'd most like to keep secret in one server, and depending on exactly how the system works, may require installing software on your local machine with ~root permissions. If the operator is malicious, this is a really dangerous combination.

So, use non Russian and non US providers.

Because Russia and the US are incapable of compromising or suborning providers from elsewhere?

Use open source clients / systems like OpenVPN. Use a VM or separate device (raspi etc) to connect to the VPN service. Install OpenWRT or something similar onto your router (and maintain it), to avoid becoming part of such botnets. Bonus: you can use the router to connect to the VPN service.

Those are all ways to avoid installing questionable software on your primary machine, which is good, but they don't address the fact that you're still routing all of your traffic through someone else's server -- a server that tends to concentrate lots of potentially interesting traffic in one place, making it a much higher priority target than your typical ISP.

If the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world don't own or at least have significant hooks into all of the major VPN service providers, someone should be fired for not doing their job.

Comment Re:Completely wrong and misleading headline (Score 1) 50

Thanks for this, I, in proud slashdot tradition, did not read the article, but it was my layperson's understanding that it'd have been a bit more dramatic if it had reversed... like a pole flip or something.

Also, the amount of energy required to reverse it... it's hard to see where that could possibly have come from.

Comment Re:Recipe for disaster (Score 2) 160

Labeling your item with a generic "BOMB" is such a rookie mistake. Always - always! - use more descriptive bluetooth name so you know exactly which device you are controlling. E.g., "cmdrtaco's BOMB".

The name of the product is "Bomb", and "Bomb" is the default Bluetooth name.

I don't know whether that makes you advice invalid, or all the more salient.

Oops. Did I just make Slashdot do a U-turn?

ROTFL

Comment I knew this would happen eventually (Score 2) 22

Many people incorrectly think of proxies and VPNs (especially VPNs) as a security and privacy enhancement, but unless you're operating the proxy/VPN server yourself they're just as likely to be a massive security and privacy risk. The problem is that they concentrate all of the traffic you'd most like to keep secret in one server, and depending on exactly how the system works, may require installing software on your local machine with ~root permissions. If the operator is malicious, this is a really dangerous combination.

These are useful tools for location shifting and -- in fairly rare cases, and with VPNs only -- from hiding traffic from malicious. But third-party proxy/VPN services should always be viewed with suspicion. Obviously this is even more true when the provider is Russian... though it's pretty likely that wasn't made clear to the people who used the service.

Comment Re:Now we know (Score 1) 130

Just how insane he is.

Not insane at all, just uninterested in the well-being of anyone other than himself.

That's what insane is. Basic principles of morality "Do no harm" and "Take action to prevent harm" mean nothing to someone who is insane.

Sanity and morality are orthogonal.

How so?

A person can be sane and immoral, sane and moral, insane and immoral or insane and moral. "Orthogonal" is perhaps a little too strong, since it implies the absence of any relationship, but certainly all the combinations are possible.

Comment Re:Completely wrong and misleading headline (Score 2) 50

Exactly, we would have had cataclysmic earthquakes if the summary were correct.

The poles have shifted dramatically in recent decades and the field has weakened substantially leading to bright auroras in Florida and Hawaii at low KP numbers.

Models have the North Pole arriving at the Bay of Bengal sooner than anybody would expect. Christmas will be awkward until we change our vocabulary..

Comment Re:How about (Score 1) 114

Oh, forgot to link the dry density for you: here you go. 341kcal/100g. Aka 3,41kcal/g.

Which, like I said, should be obvious, since they're almost entirely carbs (~4kcal/g) and protein (~4kcal/g), and they're, as noted, dry (12-16% moisture). It would be quite the trick indeed to get something that is dry and and is almost entirely comprised of things that are 4kcal/g to be 1,38kcal/g! ;)

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